The Massachusetts and Connecticut mechanics at "hard" and "severe" work had from 180 to 520 grammes of protein and from 5,000 to 7,800 calories of potential energy, and in one case they rose to the 8,500 just quoted. In the dietary standards proposed by myself it did not seem to me permissible to assign less than 4,000 calories to that for a working man at "hard," and 5,700 for a man at "severe" work.[1] [Footnote 1: Statistics are also given showing that the professional men of certain European countries live comfortably and have good health on much less than Americans of the same occupation.--ED.] Now it is not easy to see why these men required so much more than was sufficient to nourish abundantly men of like occupation, but unlike temptation to overeating, in Europe. Difference in climate cannot account for it. We are a little more given to muscular exercise here, which is very well for us, but it cannot justify our eating so much.... I think the answer to this question is found in the conditions in which we live. Food is plenty. Holding to a tradition which had its origin where food was less abundant, that the natural instinct is the measure of what we should eat, we follow the dictates of the palate. Living in the midst of abundance, our diet has not been regulated by the restraints which obtain with the great majority of the people of the Old World, where food is dear and incomes are small. Indeed, the very progress which we are making in our civilization brings with it increased temptation to overeating. The four quarters of the earth are ransacked to supply us with the things which will most tempt our appetites, and the utmost effort of cooks and housewives is used in the same direction. It is all the more fitting, therefore, that information as to our excesses and the ways of avoiding them should come at the same time. How much harm is done to health by our one-sided and excessive diet no one can say. Physicians tell us that it is very great. Of the vice of overeating, Sir Henry Thompson, a noted English physician and authority on the subject, says: "I have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters the middle and latter part of life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life accrues to civilized man ... in England and throughout central Europe from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that evil to be." This is in the fullest accord with the opinions of physicians and hygienists who have given the most attention to the subject, and these opinions are exactly parallel with the statistics here cited.